UFOs Over Mexico

At the beginning of this podcast was the introduction from the first Mexican documentary on UFOs. It was not a television show or a movie, but a thirty three and a third 12-inch vinyl record titled “El Enigma de los OVNIs,” or in English, “The UFO Enigma.” It was recorded in the late 1960s by two Mexican UFO researchers, Jorge Raiger and Ramiro Garza. The recording was re-released in 2015 and according to many Latin American UFO buffs and serious investigators alike, the breakthrough audio documentary has stood the test of time. For those needing a translation, the announcer at the beginning talks about how a public relations director at NASA in the United States has recently revealed that for quite some time we have been visited by flying saucers and they are interplanetary and that we have been observed be beings from outer space. The recording continues, going deep into the 1960s research about the UFO phenomenon. Here on “Mexico Unexplained” we will carry the torch of Raiger and Garza and continue with the story of UFOs over Mexico and the various occurrences associated with their mysterious appearances.

Theories of ancient astronauts and the extraterrestrial origins of ancient Mexican civilizations began to pop up in the mid- to late-1960s, around the same time as the “Enigma” recording. Books like Chariots of the Gods? and The Outer Space Connection were published decades ago and propose that Mexico has been visited by off-world intelligences for millennia. We will concentrate on the modern UFO phenomenon as it applies to Mexico in this show. As mentioned in Episode # 42 of “Mexico Unexplained” titled “José and the Skyfish,” the first reported Mexican UFO sighting in modern times came from the Zacatecas Observatory in August of 1883. Astronomer José Bonilla was studying the sun and he recorded and photographed over 300 dark and unknown objects crossing the sun’s surface. Other than hot air balloons, there was no form of aircraft around at the time to explain away Doctor Bonilla’s observation. The movements of these objects suggested something organic, but as it has not yet been determined what these objects actually were, they remain to this day unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

The modern UFO phenomenon in Mexico seemed to run a parallel course to its counterpart in the United States. UFOs in the shape of flying saucers, called platillos volantes in Spanish, began to appear in Mexican skies in the 1940s and 1950s, much as they did in the skies over the United States. Before the flying saucer epoch, Mexico had very few reports of strange objects in the sky. There were a few stories of mysterious cigar-shaped craft, but they were often dismissed as zeppelin prototypes coming from the US or Germany. The metallic, disc-shaped platillos seemed to dominate the Mexican skies for a few decades. It has only been in the last 30 years of the 20th Century that UFOs have taken on other appearances. Everything from blinking lights, to geometrical shapes like cubes and orbs, to squid-like objects, to dark triangles. These mysterious objects have been solo or have been classified as “fleets” when a handful or more have been found flying together in some sort of formation. There have been several “mothership” sightings, as well. A notable one occurred on October 11, 2014 over Mexico City during which observers saw and filmed a massive object in the sky and several smaller ships around it. In May of the previous year, a cigar-shaped mothership also appeared over Mexico’s capital and it seemed to “drop” smaller orbs into the sky before taking off.

It is important to note how many sightings have occurred over Mexico City and why. As one of the most populated urban centers on earth with almost 25 million people living there, there are many eyes available to look toward the sky. A “mass sighting” over Mexico’s capital city may involve tens of thousands of people, if not more. With more and more people living in the Valley of Mexico and with more and more people equipped with cameras ready-made on their cel phones, it seems like the sightings are ever more frequent. It may be that unknown objects in the skies above Mexico City have always been there and have always been this frequent, but now there are just more eyes and more recording devices. The biggest mass sighting in Mexico City came almost 2 decades before most people had cel phones, in 1991. On July 11, 1991 Mexico City was preparing for what was called “The Eclipse of the Millennium.” A total eclipse of the sun lasting 6 minutes and 45 seconds was to occur over the Mexican capital city in early afternoon. With people looking to the sky numbering into the millions, according to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of people noticed a shiny metal object hovering in the near distance a few minutes into the eclipse. It was metallic, disc-shaped and rotated. Guillermo Arreguín, a cameraman for the Mexican television network Televisa, who was filming the eclipse, got footage of the object. It was broadcast on Mexican television later that night. After that broadcast 17 other people came forward with similar videocam footage recorded from various parts of the city. With so many people looking up to observe the eclipse, this July 11, 1991 sighting may be the most observed UFO experience in human history.

A very curious phenomenon with regard to UFOs in Mexico is the strange frequency that UFOs are observed flying in and out of volcanoes. Three volcanoes of note with such sightings are Nevado de Toluca, the Colima volcano and the massive Popcatépetl, which looms in the distance over Mexico City. All of these volcanoes are located in central Mexico. In January of 2014 a glowing orb was filmed rising in and out of the caldera of Nevado de Toluca. The Mexico City volcano, nicknamed “Popó,” has had the most UFO sightings connected with it than any other volcano. In the year 2013 alone there were sightings recorded in every month of that year. The Colima volcano and Popó have been further scrutinized by the emergence of a website in 2011 called “Webcams de Mexico.” This site provides live footage of these volcanoes and many UFOS have been spotted going in and out of these mountains by the cameras connected with this web site. This web cam site is also responsible for other UFO footage taken throughout Mexico at various other locales. Online there is ample footage of mysterious objects taken from these live webcams.

The most well-known UFO-related incident in Mexico happened in the state of Chihuahua in 1974 when a large metallic disc supposedly crashed into a small private plane. The story is pretty detailed and you can learn all about it in episode # 31 of Mexico Unexplained titled “The Flying Saucer Crash at Coyame: A Mexican Roswell?” Another famous Mexican plane-related incident happened in May of 1975. Carlos Antonio de los Santos was flying his small private plane over the town of Tequesquitengo in the state of Morelos when three metallic objects only about 8 feet in diameter – I guess we would call these platillitos volantes – took control of his aircraft. One hovered below the fuselage and one over each wing. De los Santos landed without incident and with no harm to his aircraft or his person.

No exploration of UFOs or extraterrestrial visitation would be complete without examining the abduction phenomenon. In this phenomenon abductees, or “experiencers,” are taken aboard alien spacecraft and experimented upon, taken for rides or given information or messages for humanity. The first American case of alleged alien abduction happened in New England in 1961 to Betty and Barney Hill. The first major abduction case in the entire world, according to most UFO researchers, occurred in Brazil to a farmer named Antônio Vilas Boas in 1957. However, there was an obscure case that happened in Mexico in 1953, a full 4 years before the Brazilian abduction. In August of that year, so the story goes, a taxi driver named Salvador Villanueva Medina was on his way to the border town of Laredo traveling on an obscure road in northern Mexico. His car broke down and out of the sagebrush appeared a being with long blond hair, light eyes and a sleek body with milky skin. Medina asked if the person was American and the being told him that he was from the planet Venus. He stood there talking to Medina and described his home world. There was one ocean, there was one government. Children were in the care of the government until they reached maturity. There were no wars and the whole world was under one flag. Medina did not believe the blond being, known in the UFO terminology as a “Nordic,” so the being invited him to see his spacecraft which was parked over a hill. Medina followed him and over the hill he saw the typical disc-shaped metallic craft resting on metal legs so that the underbelly would not touch the ground. The Venusian asked Medina if he would like to take a trip in the saucer. The humble Mexican taxi driver agreed. The flight through space was quick and Medina stayed on Venus for 5 days, experiencing what the blond being had described to him on that back road in Mexico. Medina then returned home and wrote a book about his trip titled Estuve en el planeta venus, in English, I Was on the Planet Venus, only available in Spanish. After publication, Medina suffered much derision and ostracism from family and friends. He visited a psychiatrist who did not find him to be delusional. By anyone’s measure, this seems like a fanciful story. At the time – the decade of the 1950s – many people believed that Venus was an inhabited world. Many believed that Medina’s story was just a made up tale to capitalize on the nascent interest in other planets and the possibility of space travel. In any case, the Medina incident is the first reportedly documented alien abduction ever to be publicized, although it did not make it very far out of Mexico. Was it real? Many have a hard time believing it or anything else connected with extraterrestrials. But what of the objects in the sky? As with all topics here on Mexico Unexplained, we leave the ponderings, ruminations and further investigations up to you.